Afloat and Ashore (61 page)

"If you should find an occasion, Miles, let us hear from you," said my
old friend. "I have a lively curiosity to learn something of the
Frenchmen; nor am I entirely without the hope of soon gratifying the
desire, in person."

"You!—If you have any intention to visit France, what better
opportunity, than to go in my cabin? Is it business, that will take
you there?"

"Not at all; pure pleasure. Our excellent cousin thinks a gentleman of
a certain class ought to travel; and I believe she has an idea of
getting me attached to the legation, in some form or other."

This sounded so odd to me! Rupert Hardinge, who had not one penny to
rub against another, so lately, was now talking of his European tour,
and of legations! I ought to have been glad of his good fortune, and I
fancied I was. I said nothing, this time, concerning his taking up
any portion of my earnings, having the sufficient excuse of not being
on pay myself. Rupert did not stay long in the sloop, and we were soon
under way. I looked eagerly along the high banks of the creek, fringed
as it was with bushes, in hopes of seeing Grace, at least; nor was I
disappointed. She and Lucy had taken a direct path to the point where
the two waters united, and were standing there, as the sloop dropped
past. They both waved their handkerchiefs, in a way to show the
interest they felt in me; and I returned the parting salutations by
kissing my hand again and again. At this instant, a sail-boat passed
our bows, and I saw a gentleman standing up in it, waving his
handkerchief, quite as industriously as I was kissing my hand. A look
told me it was Andrew Drewett, who directed his boat to the point, and
was soon making his bows to the girls in person. His boat ascended the
creek, no doubt with his luggage; while the last I saw of the party it
was walking off in company, taking the direction of the house.

"Or feeling—, as the storm increases,
The love of terror nerve thy breast,
Didst venture to the coast:
To see the mighty war-ship leap
From wave to wave upon the deep,
Like chamois goat from steep to steep,
Till low in valley lost."
ALLSTON.

Roger Talcott had not been idle during my absence. Clawbonny was so
dear to me, that I had staid longer than was proposed in the original
plan; and I now found the hatches on the Dawn, a crew shipped, and
nothing remaining but to clear out. I mean the literal thing, and not
the slang phrase, one of those of which so many have crept into the
American language, through the shop, and which even find their way
into print; such as "charter coaches," "on a boat," "on board a
stage," and other similar elegancies. "
On
a boat" always makes
me—, even at my present time of life. The Dawn was cleared the day I
reached town.

Several of the crew of the Crisis had shipped with us anew, the poor
fellows having already made away with all their wages and prize-money,
in the short space of a month! This denoted the usual improvidence of
sailors, and was thought nothing out of the common way. The country
being at peace, a difficulty with Tripoli excepted, it was no longer
necessary for ships to go armed. The sudden excitement produced by the
brush with the French had already subsided, and the navy was reduced
to a few vessels that had been regularly built for the service; while
the lists of officers had been curtailed of two-thirds of their
names. We were no longer a warlike, but were fast getting to be a
strictly commercial, body of seamen. I had a single six-pounder, and
half a dozen muskets, in the Dawn, besides a pair or two of pistols,
with just ammunition enough to quell a mutiny, fire a few signal-guns,
or to kill a few ducks.

We sailed on the 3rd of July. I have elsewhere intimated that the
Manhattanese hold exaggerated notions of the comparative beauty of the
scenery of their port, sometimes presuming to compare it even with
Naples; to the bay of which it bears some such resemblance as a Dutch
canal bears to a river flowing through rich meadows, in the freedom
and grace of nature. Nevertheless, there
are
times and seasons
when the bay of New York offers a landscape worthy of any pencil. It
was at one of these felicitous moments that the Dawn cast off from the
wharf, and commenced her voyage to Bordeaux. There was barely air
enough from the southward to enable us to handle the ship, and we
profited by a morning ebb to drop down to the Narrows, in the midst of
a fleet of some forty sail; most of the latter, however, being
coasters. Still, we were a dozen ships and brigs, bound to almost as
many different countries. The little air there was, seemed scarcely to
touch the surface of the water; and the broad expanse of bay was as
placid as an inland lake, of a summer's morning. Yes, yes—there are
moments when the haven of New York does present pictures on which the
artist would seize with avidity; but, the instant nature attempts any
of her grander models, on this, a spot that seems never to rise much
above the level of commercial excellencies, it is found that the
accessaries are deficient in sublimity, or even beauty.

I have never seen our home waters so lovely as on this morning. The
movements of the vessels gave just enough of life and variety to the
scene to destroy the appearance of sameness; while the craft were too
far from the land to prevent one of the most unpleasant effects of the
ordinary landscape scenery of the place—that produced by the
disproportion between the tallness of their spars, and the low
character of the adjacent shores. As we drew near the Narrows, the
wind increased; and forty sail, working through the pass in close
conjunction, terminated the piece with something like the effect
produced by a
finale
in an overture. The brightness of the
morning, the placid charms of the scenery, and the propitious
circumstances under which I commenced the voyage, in a commercial
point of view, had all contributed to make me momentarily forget my
private griefs, and to enter cheerfully into the enjoyment of the
hour.

I greatly disliked passengers. They appealed to me to lessen the
dignity of my position, and to reduce me to the level of an
inn-keeper, or one who received boarders. I wished to command a ship,
not to take in lodgers; persons whom you are bound to treat with a
certain degree of consideration, and, in one sense, as your
superiors. Still, it had too much of an appearance of surliness, and a
want of hospitality, to refuse a respectable man a passage across the
ocean, when he might not get another chance in a month, and that, too,
when it was important to himself to proceed immediately. In this
particular instance, I became the dupe of a mistaken kindness on the
part of my former owners. These gentlemen brought to me a
Mr. Brigham—Wallace Mortimer Brigham was his whole name, to be
particular—as a person who was desirous of getting to France with his
wife and wife's sister, in order to proceed to Italy for the health of
the married lady, who was believed to be verging on a decline. These
people were from the eastward, and had fallen into the old error of
Americans, that the south of France and Italy had residences far more
favourable for such a disease, than our own country. This was one of
the provincial notions of the day, that were entailed on us by means
of colonial dependency. I suppose the colonial existence is as
necessary to a people, as childhood and adolescence are to the man;
but, as my Lady Mary Wortley Montagu told her friend, Lady Rich—"Nay;
but look you, my dear madam, I grant it a very fine thing to continue
always fifteen;
that
, everybody must approve of—it is quite
fair: but, indeed, indeed, one need not be five years old."

I was prevailed on to take these passengers, and I got a specimen of
their characters even as we dropped down the bay, in the midst of the
agreeable scene to which I have just alluded. They were
gossips
; and that, too, of the lowest, or personal
cast. Nothing made them so happy as to be talking of the private
concerns of their fellow-creatures; and, as ever must happen where
this propensity exists, nine-tenths of what they said rested on no
better foundation than surmises, inferences drawn from premises of
questionable accuracy, and judgments that were entered up without the
authority, or even the inclination, to examine witnesses. They had
also a peculiarity that I have often remarked in persons of the same
propensity; most of their gossiping arose from a desire to make
apparent their own intimacy with the private affairs of people of
mark—overlooking the circumstance that, in thus making the concerns
of others the subjects of their own comments, they were impliedly
admitting a consciousness of their own inferiority; men seldom
condescending thus to busy themselves with the affairs of any but
those of whom they feel it to be a sort of distinction to converse. I
am much afraid good-breeding has more to do with the suppression of
this vice, than good principles, as the world goes. I have remarked
that persons of a high degree of self-respect, and a good tone of
manners, are quite free from this defect of character; while I regret
to be compelled to say that I have been acquainted with divers very
saintly
professors
, including one or two parsons, who have
represented the very
beau ideal
of scandal.

My passengers gave me a taste of their quality, as I have said, before
we had got a mile below Governor's Island. The ladies were named
Sarah and Jane; and, between them and Wallace Mortimer, what an
insight did I obtain into the private affairs of sundry personages of
Salem, in Massachusetts, together with certain glimpses in at Boston
folk; all, however, referring to qualities and facts that might be
classed among the real or supposed. I can, at this distant day, recall
Scene 1st, Act 1st, of the drama that continued while we were crossing
the ocean, with the slight interruption of a few days, produced by
sea-sickness.

"Wallace," said Sarah, "did you say, yesterday, that John Viner had
refused to lend his daughter's husband twenty thousand dollars, to get
him out of his difficulties, and that he failed in consequence?"

"To be sure. It was the common talk through Wall Street yesterday, and
everybody believes it"—there was no more truth in the story, than in
one of the forty reports that have killed General Jackson so often, in
the last twenty years. "Yes, no one doubts it—but all the Viners are
just so! All of us, in our part of the world, know what to think of
the Viners."

"Yes, I suppose so," drawled Jane. "I've heard it said this John
Viner's father ran all the way from the Commons in Boston, to the foot
of State Street, to get rid of a dun against this very son, who had
his own misfortunes when he was young."

"The story is quite likely true in part," rejoined Wallace, "though it
can't be
quite
accurate, as the old gentleman had but one leg,
and
running
was altogether out of the question with
him
.
It was probably old Tim Viner, who ran like a deer when a young man,
as I've heard people say."

"Well, then, I suppose he ran his horse," added Jane, in the same
quiet, drawling tone. "
Something
must have run, or they never
would have got up the story."

I wondered if Miss Jane Hitchcox had ever taken the trouble to
ascertain who
they
were! I happened to know both the Viners,
and to be quite certain there was not a word of truth in the report of
the twenty thousand dollars, having heard all the particulars of the
late failure from one of my former owners, who was an assignee, and a
considerable creditor. Under the circumstances, I thought I would hint
as much.

"Are you quite sure that the failure of Viner & Co. was owing to the
circumstance you mention, Mr. Brigham?" I inquired.

"Pretty certain. I am '
measurably acquainted
' with their
affairs, and think I am tolerably safe in saying so."

Now, "measurably acquainted" meant that he lived within twenty or
thirty miles of those who
did
know something of the concerns of
the house in question, and was in the way of catching scraps of the
gossip that fell from disappointed creditors. How much of this is
there in this good country of ours! Men who live just near enough to
one another to feel the influence of all that rivalry, envy, personal
strifes and personal malignancies, can generate, fancy they are
acquainted, from this circumstance, with those to whom they have never
even spoken. One-half the idle tales that circulate up and-down the
land, come from authority not one tittle better than this. How much
would men learn, could they only acquire the healthful lesson of
understanding that
nothing
, which is much out of the ordinary
way, and which, circulates as received truths illustrative of
character, is true in
all
its material parts, and very little
in
any
. But, to return to my passengers, and that portion of
their conversation which most affected myself. They continued
commenting on persons and families by name, seemingly more to keep
their hands in, than for any other discoverable reason, as each
appeared to be perfectly conversant with all the gossip that was
started; when Sarah casually mentioned the name of Mrs. Bradfort, with
some of whose
supposed
friends, it now came out, they had all a
general visiting acquaintance.

"Dr. Hosack is of opinion she cannot live long, I hear," said Jane,
with a species of fierce delight in killing a fellow-creature,
provided it only led to a gossip concerning her private affairs. "Her
case has been decided to be a cancer, now, for more than a week, and
she made her will last Tuesday."

"Only last Tuesday!" exclaimed Sarah, in surprise. "Well, I heard she
had made her will a twelvemonth since, and that she left all her
property to young Rupert Hardinge; in the expectation, some persons
thought, that he might marry her."